According to the agreement, the two companies will add Cylink's encryption software as an option to vendors
that currently support RSA Data Security's widely used crypto algorithms. RSA has dominated the encryption market because its technology is both tested over time and licensed on favorable terms.

"Cylink's reputation in the security market and the strength of the code
we've licensed from them makes Cylink the best independent organization
to help us build better security into Java," David Spenhoff, director of
product marketing for Sun's JavaSoft
unit, said in a statement.

The Sun and Microsoft licenses follow Cylink's announcement last month
that it would license its encryption algorithm to start-up Phaos Technology for Phaos's Java-based
security toolkit.
Analysts
suggest growing acceptance of non-RSA algorithms could undermine RSA, now a
subsidiary of Security
Dynamics Technology (SDTI).

JavaSoft will include Cylink's X.509 digital certificate technology in a
future release of its Java Development Kit, which is used to build e-commerce and other
secure applications.

Microsoft has licensed Cylink's software for future versions its Internet Explorer 4.0 Web browser and version 5.0 of
its
Windows NT operating system. Cylink security is built into current beta
versions of IE 4.0.

Cylink's software is based on Diffie-Hellman and the Digital Signature
Standard (DSS) public-key cryptography.

JavaSoft's new kit will include a set of foundation classes to handle
X.509, version 3 digital certificates, which serve as digital IDs to
verify the identity of parties in an online exchange. Digital certificates in the Java development kit will help developers build strong
authentication into Java applications.

Standards bodies
ANSI (American National Standards
Institute and ISO/ITU have approved X.509 certificates as a
standards,
and the Internet Engineering Task
Force
(ITEF) is considering the same action.